As in its Hachette dispute, Amazon resorts to holding back sales.

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In a new contract dispute with Warner Home Video, Amazon is flexing its supply muscles and restricting preorders for upcoming releases like The Lego Movie and 300: Rise of an Empire, according to a report from The New York Times Wednesday. Despite those movies having featured placement in Amazon's search results, sales are uncharacteristically low for the highly anticipated releases on the site.

The restriction comes in the midst of another higher-profile conflict over e-book pricing with Hachette Book Group, where Amazon has stopped taking preorders and has dragged its feet on shipping Hachette products. Amazon wrote at the end of May that these contract disputes are normal, and customers who wanted Hachette products should buy from Amazon's third-party sellers or go elsewhere.

Amazon now appears to be in a similar situation with Warner, and customers are complaining in the site's forums that they cannot preorder the above movies, as well as titles like Winter's Tale, Transcendence, and Muppets: Most Wanted. The Times says that the lack of a Lego Movie pre-order might be the hardest blow to Warner's bottom line, as it's one of the biggest releases of the year so far.

With its DVD release date in less than a week on June 17, The Lego Movie is sitting at position 21,277 in the "Movies & TV" category of Amazon's Best Sellers rank. The movie is featured in the top ten results for Blu-ray movies under the "Kids & Family" category, but it's the only one that isn't available for preorder. It is, however, available for purchase as an Amazon Instant streaming video.

Neither Amazon nor Warner Home Video has made public statements about how long the standoff might last.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston